New research from the Initiative for Smallholder Finance reveals that local bank lending to smallholder farmers – which should be a main avenue for improving their access to finance – amounts to only $9 billion. That number represents less than 3 percent of the estimated total smallholder financing demand.This gap in finance deserves attention, as global development practitioners consider the world’s 450 million smallholder farmers a linchpin in poverty-reduction strategies. As population growth and rising incomes create unprecedented demand for food, multinational companies increasingly rely on smallholders to secure their supply of agricultural commodities. As a result, smallholders present a compelling opportunity for buyers, lenders and other actors in the agricultural value chain. However, most smallholders lack access to finance, holding them back from producing larger crop yields of higher quality to propel both economic growth and poverty alleviation